Friday, April 18, 2008

New filler material

AvGas is approaching $5 a gallon, so this may not be much of a year for flying. I've already curtailed my evening canters - pretty much looking for weekend trips only this year. We'll see.

Anyway, I've got to fill space on the blog somehow, and if I continue down the slippery slope of "anger blogging," all the fun is going to go out of it. So, for the first time ever, I'm introducing "Old Airplane Picture Day." The beauty of really old pictures of really old airplanes is twofold: I like them (as you may have noticed with my insistance on using those dreary sepia-toned pix of PapaGolf in the banner), and they are typically unencumbered with those ever-annoying copyright issues.

So, short story already made too long, here's the first. I'm too lazy to do even rudimentary research to determine what kind of plane this is, or any of its storied history. As is my wont, I will fill in the vast gaps left by my slothful nature and just make stuff up.

Here we have an example of a depression era float plane. By living a life of bleak subsistance which eroded their bodies to mere husks of their former sizes, the Turner brothers were able to devote enough of their limited resources to the design and building of the Turner WH-1 ('WH' having been agreed to by the ever-cheerful boys as a reminder of their constant lament that "We're Hungry").

The design of the plane reflected their decreased wealth, both in its meager wingspan and barely suitable three cylinder engine:



The story, unfortunately, doesn't have a happy ending. The design showed tremendous promise and caught the eye of a wealthy investor. Having been fronted a few thousand dollars to advance the design, the boys quite understandably leapt at the opportunity to engorge themselves at the local buffet. What they failed to consider was the effect this would have on their weight, and both perished in a tragic accident after an ensuing test flight proved the WH-1 to be incapable of flight with the additional load.

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